EFTA00856687.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 05/17/2015 Date: Sun, 17 May 2015 07:14:37 +0000 Attachments: The_Odd_Couple_Fighting_Against_Predatory_Payday_Lending_Sean_McElwee_The_Atl antic_Mar._19,_2015.docx; When_You're_Poor„Moneyis_Expensive_Derek_Thompson_The_Atlanticiuly_14,2014 .docx; Joe_Biden,Domestic_Violence_Is_A_Public_Health_EpidemiciMelissajeltsen_Huff_Pos t_March_20,2015.docx; Global_warming_is_now_slowing_down_the_circulation_of_the_oceans_— _with_potentially_dire_consequences-Chris_Mooney_TWP_Mar._23„2015.docx; Consumer_protection_agency„for_first_timejakes_aim_at_payday_lenders_Chico_Harlan _TWP_March_26,2015.docx; It_wasn'tjust_Walter_Scott„The_North_Charleston_Police_Department_has_a_shocking_r ecord of abuse allegationsieff_Stein_Salon_April_8,2015.docx; Top_T0 juperfirods_Huff_Post_05.03.15.docx; B.B._King_bio.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(I4).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(I8).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png; image(23).png DEAR FRIEND The Scourge of Domestic Violence Inline image 1 Domestic violence (also domestic abuse, spousal abuse, intimate partner violence, battering or family violence) is a ugly pattern of behavior which involves violence or other abuse by one person in a domestic context against another, such as in marriage or cohabitation. Intimate partner violence is domestic violence by a spouse or partner in an intimate relationship against the other spouse or EFTA00856687 partner. Domestic violence can take place in heterosexual or same-sex relationships. Domestic violence can take a number of forms including physical, emotional, verbal, economic and sexual abuse, which can range from subtle, coercive forms to marital rape and to violent physical abuse that results in disfigurement or death. FAST FACTS • Globally, 35 percent of women experience sexual or physical violence (World Health Organization) • Each year, 3 million girls face the risk of female genital mutilation or cutting (UNFPA) • Sixty percent of women whose first sexual experience was forced go on to experience further sexual violence later in life (UNFPA) Last month at a conference in Washington, •. at the Futures Without Violence seventh biennial National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence, Vice President Joe Biden called domestic violence a "public health epidemic" that requires urgent attention in an address Friday to an audience of the country's preeminent medical, public health and domestic violence experts. "All of you in this room who are doctors, nurses, researchers, social workersfrom all across the country, thefact that we are talking today about domestic violence as a public health epidemic is because of you," he said. "We have come such a long way in ourfight against this epidemic, but we have to keep making the case even strongerfor prevention and intervention." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly one-third of U.S. women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Domestic violence is associated with an array of health problems. In the short-term, physical violence can result in serious injuries or even death. At least one-third of all female homicide victims in the U.S. are killed by male intimate partners. But studies have found that domestic violence has long-term health consequences as well. 'According to the CDC and other research, the chronic stressfrom domestic violence is toxic to the body," Biden said, calling the science "compelling." "It's associated with long-term health problems like asthma, diabetes, anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug abuse." Domestic violence has been a signature issue for Biden for decades. In 1990, he introduced the landmark Violence Against Women Act, which was signed into law in 1994. Biden said when he first took on domestic violence, he was told he was going to break up families. "We knew that we had to bring this dirty little secret out into the publk," he said. Throughout his speech, the vice president emphasized that domestic violence survivors should not feel responsible for the violence they've suffered. "It is never, never, never, never, never the victim's fault," he said to rousing applause. Biden addressed his comments to more than 1,100 health care professionals attending the conference to discuss the relationship between domestic violence and health, and to learn about the latest research. Earlier in the program, Marylouise Kelley, PhD, Family Violence Prevention and Services Program Director at the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said health care professionals are in a unique position to prevent, screen and treat survivors. "We know that many domestic violence survivors will not go to a shelter," she said, "but they may be more likely to talk to a friend orfamily member or to a medical provider." EFTA00856688 In his speech, Biden applauded progress made by the Affordable Care Act, which requires health plans to cover domestic violence screenings at no cost. Biden said those screenings, in which a health professional asks a patient questions about their exposure to intimate partner violence, have a real tangible impact. 'The mere fact you asked the question lets them know that they're not alone," he said. Yolanda Haywood, a practicing emergency physician and associate dean at George Washington School for Medicine and Heath Sciences, shared her own harrowing story of being treated for a domestic violence-related injury over 3o years ago. She said she made a late-night emergency room visit after her husband punched her in the mouth. While she encountered many medical professionals in the course of her visit, no one asked her what happened or if she was safe. Finally, she said, after her doctor sutured her lip, he asked her who caused her injury. "I became hopeful," she told the audience. "I answered, 'My husband." His reply: "You need to learn how to duck."' Haywood said she spent the next several years learning to duck instead of finding support to leave. She said providers should be trained to educate patients about domestic violence so that they can make wise decisions. "What was lost that night in the ER was the opportunity to offer hope and compassion to a young woman who needed help," Haywood said. "Hope and compassion are great medicine, not just nice words that pacify." But together, we can and must change the status quo and create a world where domestic violence, rape, and other forms of violence against women become a thing of the past. Republican States Are More Dependent On Government lid int. ill EFTA00856689 When I was growing up the old people in my neighborhood use to have a saying, "you are your own worst enemy." It is said when someone acts in such a way which causes their own misfortune. And no better example of this are Republicans from Red States as those states are often more dependent on the Federal Country on average than the liberal Blue States that they revile. That's according to a recent analysis from the personal finance site WalletHub, which ranked states based on how much they rely on Uncle Sam to support their state finances. To calculate states' dependence, WalletHub analyzed three metrics: how much a state gets in federal funding per every dollar it pays in federal income taxes, the percentage of state funding that comes from the federal government and the number of federal employees per capita, both military and civilian. Check out the map below to see how dependent your home state is compared to the rest of the country. The most-dependent states are shaded white, and least-dependent states are shaded blue. A ranking of 1 indicates least-dependent, while 50 represents most-dependent. Check out the map via the web link below to see how dependent your home state is compared to the rest of the country. The most-dependent states are shaded white, and least-dependent states are shaded blue. A ranking of 1 indicates least-dependent, while 5o represents most-dependent. Web Link: html As you can see, New Mexico is the most-dependent state in the U.S., according to WalletHub's data. The state gets $2.19 in federal funding for every dollar paid in federal income taxes. In contrast, New Jersey, which is the least-dependent state, gets only about 5o cents in federal funding for every dollar paid in taxes, WalletHub calculated. For instance New Mexico is ranked 5o, Mississippi 49, Kentucky 48, Alabama 47, Montana 46 and West Virginia 45, whereas New Jersey rants 1, Delaware 2, Illinois 3, Minnesota 4, Kansas 5 and California 6. As you can see from the analysis; Red States, or those that voted Republican in the 2012 presidential election, were much more likely to depend on the government than Blue States. That's somewhat ironic, considering the Republican Party's general reluctance to support federally funded initiatives like Medicaid expansion, and its long-term dedication to across-the-board budget cuts to slash the federal deficit. Think about it.... If Ted Cruz whose core supporters are ultra-conservatives from Red States becomes President he promises to cut government programs that Red States and his core supporters are most dependent on.... So we have to ask why do they support him and Republican Conservatives like him. Raise the wage: Paul ICrugman shatters the myth that we can't afford to boost workers' pay We can pay workers more -- if we want to EFTA00856690  Inline image 2 Three things are inevitable in this life: death, taxes, and conservative claims that we simply can't afford to give low-wage workers a pay boost. Nobel Prize-winning economist takes on the latter inevitability in his New York Times column today, seizing on recent developments to illustrate why arguments against wage increases don't withstand serious scrutiny. Take McDonald's announcement this week that it would pay its workers $1 above the minimum wage per hour at the 1,500 outlets owned and operated by McDonald's itself. (The move, which still falls well short of what workers and their advocates seek, affects 90,000 workers, but it doesn't apply to the 750,000 workers employed by McDonald's 3,100 American franchisees.) While modest in scope,McDonald's move — coming on the heels of similar wage boosts by bold-faced names like Walmart and Target — suggests that "maybe it's not that hard to give American workers a raise, after all," Krugman writes. While free market fundamentalists might retort that global competition will sink firms that boost worker pay, Krugman responds by noting that most American workers are "employed in service industries that aren't exposed to international trade." What about technology? Isn't it an unassailable maxim of modem economics that we can afford to pay larger wages only to highly skilled workers — ones who can't be replaced by machines? As Mike Konczal wrote recently, technology is but a small part of the larger inequality phenomenon. The key factors, he pointed out, include tax policy, the financialization of the American economy, deunionization, and the conscious political choice not to raise the minimum wage. What's more, Kingman observes, "Workers are people; relations between employers and employees are more complicated than simple supply and demand." This truism is borne out in empirical EFTA00856691 evidence, with comparisons of states that raised their minimum wages with neighboring states that didn't showing that higher pay does not mean fewer jobs. Paul Krugman — Huffington Post— May 17, 2015 Why It is Important for Your Teenager to Find Their Passion Inline image 1 If you live with a high school senior like I do, you most likely are finally happy that the ritual of choosing a college/university, then getting an acceptance from a school and (in today's environment, "schools" as some students apply to 12 to 14, just in case they don't get into their first choice), and then watch your child go through the agonizing task of committing to one of the four or five (in our case nine chokes, including his top three). Yet, this ritual begins much earlier, starting in middle-school to insure that the child has dialed into education, taken the pre-requisite classes, as well as a sport. And then do the extra-curricular activities that might give them an edge when colleges chose students. As a result of the contraction of the job market, due to the financial crash in 2008, that sent unemployment into the stratosphere, even at this stage, high school seniors have to take a serious at career choices after colleges. (Because I believe that today's generation needs at least a college degree or trade school education to develop a skill set, if they are to be able to compete against their counterparts around the world.) As a result, more and more Millennia's are making career choices earlier than my generation, The Baby Boomers, who believed that a career choice didn't have to be made until the summer before your junior year in college. The good news is that the Labor Department says job prospects for recent college graduates deteriorated slightly last year despite an improvement in the overall job market. The unemployment rate for Americans age 20 to 29 who received a four-year or advanced degree last year rose to 12.4 EFTA00856692 percent from 10.9 percent in 2013. But the figures are volatile, and many recruiters and campus officials say hiring this spring will be strong. For graduates with bachelor's degrees, unemployment climbed to 14.9 percent last year from 11.5 percent in 2013. For those with advanced degrees, unemployment slid to 5.4 percent from 9.3 percent. Overall, the economy generated 3.1 million jobs last year, the most since 1999. And the overall unemployment rate has fallen to 5.5 percent in March from 6.7 percent at the end of 2013. College graduates in the class of 2015 with bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering can expect an average starting salary of $57,000. Computer engineering graduates are close behind, with average salaries of $56,600. Next come mechanical engineering graduates with starting salaries of $56,000. For the last 20 years, Phil Gardner, who runs Michigan State University's employment office, has been in charge of a broad-based survey that gathers starting salary information from thousands of employers across the country. Gardner works through Michigan State's Collegiate Employment Research Institute, where he is the director. This year CERI collected data from mid-August to mid- September, tapping the employment offices at 200 schools, which gathered starting salary data from 3,300 employers. Gardner says that engineering degrees have come out on top since he first took charge at CERI. "Students with these majors are highly technical and deeply trained so they have a more immediate value to employers," he says. "They can apply their knowledge quickly to the workplace, so they can command a higher salary." After the top two engineering degrees, employers are paying the most for grads with degrees in software design and computer programming. "Everybody is looking for graduates with expertise in computer science," says Gardner. "There's just a huge demand." While engineering and computer science graduates will command strong starting salaries next year, CERI's research also shows a sobering statistic: The majority of employers, 62%, plan to keep salaries at the same level as last year, which means a slight decline in wages, given inflation. Only 37% of employers are planning to increase salaries, and then only by 3%-5%. A smaller group, 18% of employers, plan to hike salaries by more than 1096. Those increases will come in the following sectors: manufacturing, finance and insurance services, and professional, business and scientific services. As for company size, small- and fast-growth companies will have the greatest increases, with 23% of those firms offering compensation that is io% higher than last year. If engineering and computer science are at the top of the list, what's at the bottom? Advertising, social work and psychology all pay below $37,000. A major the table lists as "Humanities and Liberal Arts" fares a bit better, with a starting salary of $39,000. (The salaries in the table include only base salaries and not commissions, stipends, bonuses, housing and moving allowances or other incentives.) So if you have a high school senior who has just committed to a college or university and haven't dialed into an initial career choice. (Today almost no people spend their career at a single company or even in a single industry.) It is important that they get focused as early as they can and identify a career that matches their passion. Because it is almost impossible to be successful if you aren't passionate. And even if you are successful, if you are not doing something that you enjoy The money isn't worth it... It wasn't just Walter Scott: The North Charleston Police Department has a shocking record of abuse allegations EFTA00856693  Inline image t We would like to believe that the horrendous shooting of unarmed Walter Scott on April 4, 2015 in South Carolina by police officer Michael T. Slager is an anomaly but a review of public court records shows that the North Charleston Police Department has a shocking record of abuse allegations. One example: Journalist Jeff Stein recently wrote about Sheldon Williams, who was sleeping at a Budget Inn in North Charleston, South Carolina, when five police officers entered his motel room. After finding Williams hiding under a mattress, the officers pinned the unarmed man to the concrete floor, handcuffed him, and then began stomping on his face. Williams, an African-American, was unarmed and never accused of resisting arrest. Williams would later be diagnosed with several broken facial bones, but the five officers first brought him to the jail. Jail officials had to turn Williams away because of the severity of his injuries. More than two hours after he was beaten, Williams finally arrived at the Roper St. Francis Hospital and was diagnosed with a fracture to his cheekbone, a depressed fracture to the left orbital floor of his face, and a third fracture of the left sinus wall. When Williams was released, the hospital staff gave law enforcement explicit instructions that he would have to see a special surgeon within one week. That information was somehow ignored, and Williams' broken facial bones were never treated. Needless and agonizing pain followed: Williams now struggles to sleep at night and faces long-term neurological damage. Sometimes, because of the extent of the nerve damage, Williams "experiences a sensation of insects crawling on the left side of hisface." EFTA00856694  Inline image The above account comes from just one of the many federal lawsuits filed against the North Charleston Police Department over the last to years. That police force is now under the national spotlight for the outrageous slaying of Walter L. Scott, an unarmed black man who was gunned down as he was running away from police, according to a report in the New York Times. North Charleston Police Officer Michael T. Slager, who is white, was charged with murder on April 7, 2015, only after a video emerged showing the shooting of Walter Scott and its aftermath in excruciating detail. When I looked at the video it reminded me of the shooting of Michael Brown who was shot fleeing from police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. And yes there was a close contact altercation between Brown and Wilson, but everyone agrees that Brown fled and to believe that he somehow turned back and charge a police officer after being shot is truly difficult to believe. And the one thing that the cities of Ferguson and North Charleston have in common is that both police departments have a history of abuse allegations. No one denies that police officers have hard jobs, but they volunteer to enter that line of work. There is no draft. So these disparities cannot go unaddressed and uncorrected. To be held in high esteem you must also be held to a higher standard. And no one denies that high-crime neighborhoods disproportionately overlap with minority neighborhoods. But the intersections don't stop there. Concentrated poverty plays a consequential role. So does the school-to-prison pipeline. So do the scars of historical oppression. In fact, these and other factors intersect to such a degree that trying to separate any one — most often, the racial one — from the rest is bound to render a flimsy argument based on the fallacy of discrete factors. Yet people continue to make such arguments, which can usually be distilled to some variation of this: Black dysfunction is mostly or even solely the result of black pathology. This argument is racist at its core because it rests too heavily on choice and too lightly on context. If you scratch it, what oozes out reeks of race-informed cultural decay or even genetic deficiency and predisposition, as if America is not the progenitor — the great-grandmother — of African-American violence. And yes, racist is the word that we must use. Racism doesn't require the presence of malice, only the presence of bias and ignorance, willful or otherwise. It doesn't even require more than one race. There are plenty of members of aggrieved groups who are part of the self-flagellation industrial complex. They make a name (and a profit) saying inflammatory things about their own groups, things that are full of sting but lack context, things that others will say only behind tightly shut doors. These are often people who've "made it" and look down their noses with be-more-like-me disdain at those who haven't, EFTA00856695 as if success were merely a result of a collection of choices and not also of a confluence of circumstances. Today, too many people are gun-shy about using the word racism, lest they themselves be called race- baiters. So we are witnessing an assault on the concept of racism, an attempt to erase legitimate discussion and grievance by degrading the language: Eliminate the word and you elude the charge. The death of Walter Scott is a racist act. And a review of public court records shows that both North Charleston and Ferguson's Police Departments have a history of abuse against people of color and particularly Black men. Racism is interpersonal and structural; it is current and historical; it is explicit and implicit; it is articulated and silent. Biases are pervasive, but can also be spectral: moving in and out of consideration with little or no notice, without leaving a trace, even without our own awareness. Sometimes the only way to see bias is in the aggregate, to stop staring so hard at a data point and step back so that you can see the data set. Only then can you detect the trails in the dust. Only then can the data do battle with denial. I would love to live in a world where that wasn't the case. Even more, I would love my children to inherit a world where that wasn't the case, where the margin for error for them was the same as the margin for error for everyone else's children, where I could rest assured that police treatment would be unbiased. But I don't. Reality doesn't bend under the weight of wishes. Truth doesn't grow dim because we squint. We must acknowledge — with eyes and minds wide open — the world as it is if we want to change it. And if we really want to change it police departments have to be more transparent and willing to root out the bad apples within their ranks. Hopefully the senseless and blatant killing of Walter Scott has to be treated like Ebola — a united country that refuses to accept the loss of one life, whatever color or creed And this is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS When You're Poor, Money Is Expensive Predatory Payday Lending EFTA00856696  Inline image 1 Last year journalist Derek Thomspon wrote an article about Alex who lost his job when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had to quit his job. Alex and his wife Melissa have a young son who has severe autism. Their medical costs suddenly soared as their incomes dwindled and in a flash, their lives changed dramatically. To manage their finances as responsibly as they knew how, Alex and Melissa chose to live on cash. But they weren't making enough money to meet their bills. Without a credit history, they couldn't qualify for a bank loan. Desperate for some money to tide them over, Melissa visited a payday lender. Trapped in a cycle of dependency a $450 loan ended up becoming $1,700 with fees in a New York minute. Payday lending is currently a $46 billion industry in the United States. About 12 million Americans borrow $7.4 billion annually from over 22,000 storefronts — roughly two for every Starbucks — .across the country. The industry has come under increasing scrutiny over the past decade from critics who accuse it of being exploitative, and of trapping low-income borrowers in a cycle of debt. A nexus of federalism and money in politics have slowed reform efforts at the federal level. The much- anticipated Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulations set to come out soon will not include a cap on interest rates. In the absence of federal regulation, advocates and policymakers are taking the battle to the state level. Example: Lenders in South Dakota charge an average annual rate of interest of 574 percent. In practical terms, if residents of South Dakota borrow $300 to make ends meet, five months later they will owe $660. South Dakota is one of seven states, along with Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Delaware, Texas, and Wisconsin that do not cap payday-lending rates. The trouble for South Dakota began in 1978, during the era of deregulation, when the Supreme Court decided that a national bank could charge customers in any state the interest rate of the state in which the bank was chartered. In effect, this eliminated the efficacy of usury laws, since a bank could simply move to a state with higher ceilings, setting off a race to the bottom. South Dakota won. It eliminated its usury ceiling in 1980. Citibank, soon followed by Wells Fargo, First Premier, and Capital One, requested and received permission to charter in the state. South Dakota's financial sector expanded rapidly, giving it the clout to press for further deregulatory measures in the 1990s and 2000s that opened the state to high-interest, short-term loans, like payday lending and car-title loans. "South Dakota pretty much reinvented usury when it invited Citibank in to do its credit operations," Heidelberger said. The result, as Nesiba points out, is a nominally free market in loans that offers few protections for borrowers: "One does not need to be a South Dakota EFTA00856697 fisherman to understand thatfreedomfor the northern pike in the Missouri River is notfreedomfor the minnow." The loans are tempting. Borrowers turn to payday lenders when they're facing a short-term crunch, but often find themselves in a permanent bind. Kim B., a resident of South Dakota, is on a fixed Social Security Disability income and struggles with chronic back pain. She took out payday loans in 2008 when her brother moved in and they couldn't afford their medical bills. "Pretty soon I had several loans because I couldn't afford to pay off thefirst loan and they would write me another loan," she said, "they just kept re-writing so I didn't have to make a payment." She finally got out of debt after two years of payments. In 2013, when her daughter lost her job and moved in with Kim, bringing her infant son, Kim turned to payday loans again. Eventually, she had seven loans, with annual rates varying from 120 to 6o8 percent. She had to default in July of 2014. "I couldn't afford to pay them back, I had loans to cover loans,"she said. Her sister tried to bail Kim out with $1,200, but it just wasn't enough. At one point, 75 percent of her income was going to pay off her payday loans. There was "nothing"left for food or electricity, she said. "If I lose my electricity, I lose my housing, then. be evicted and• be homeless,"she said. "It took usfour months to get caught up on electricity, and we needed assistance, but we were close to being homeless." Across the country, the payday-lending industry has a vise-like grip on legislatures. A campaign to end payday lending in Montana began bringing forward "every kind of bill you could imagine"to cap interest rates, said Tom Jacobson, a Montana State Representative. But it found itself unequal to the opposition. "They were paid lobbyists and we were advocates,"explained Jacobson. "We were never once able to get it out of committee." After 10 years of stonewalling in the legislature, advocates pushed forward with a ballot initiative to cap rates at 36 percent. The measure that couldn't even get to the floor in the legislature won an astonishing 72 percent of the vote at the polls. So far, payday-lending reformers have successfully fought four ballot initiative battles nationwide. In 2005, Texas voters stopped an initiative that would have allowed the legislature to exempt commercial loans from laws setting maximum interest rates. In 2008, Ohio voters passed an initiative capping payday loans at a 38 percent interest rate. In Arizona, the payday-lending industry tried to use a ballot initiative to secure its continued operation but lost, 59.6 percent to 40.4 percent. Payday lenders used their vast resources to attempt to derail these campaigns to cap limits. The National Institute on Money in Politics estimates that the industry spent $35.6 million in Arizona and Ohio to influence ballot initiatives. In Ohio, the industry spent $16 million on the ballot initiative, while their opponents spent only $265,000. In some cases, however, the industry has succeeded, primarily by keeping the issue off of the ballot. In Missouri, the payday-lending industry spent $600,000 (compared to the $60,000 raised by advocates) to successfully keep the issue off the ballot. Payday lenders' influence is strongest in Tennessee, where Advance America and Check Into Cash, two of the largest payday-lending corporations, got their start. Here again, money was integral to the industry's rise. Between 1995 and 2001, payday lenders donated $250,000 to political campaigns for state legislators and the governor. Maryville College professor Sherry Kasper, who studies the state's payday lending industry extensively, wrote, "Industry members appear to have deftly converted some of their profits into political contributions to both state andfederal legislators who influence the legislative debate to modify the structure of this industry in theirfavor." The Tennessee Cash Advance Association donated $125,000 to various state legislators to get the Deferred Presentment EFTA00856698 Services Act passed on October 1, 1997. In 1998, when the sunset provision in the law required that it be re-evaluated and extended, the industry forked over another $22,500 in donations to House Democrats and $8,000 in donations to State Senator Robert Rochelle, who sponsored the extension. Data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute for State Money in Politics shows that the industry has spent an inflation-adjusted $143 million between 1990 and 2014. This includes campaign contributions and lobbying at the federal level, as well as state campaign contributions. There is no comprehensive data on state-level lobbying or local spending, but they would undoubtedly raise the total sum. Inline image 2 In addition to currying favor with state legislators, this money has been effective at the federal level. The CFPB's new regulations for the payday-lending industry are built on extensive research into its practices. Fulmer notes that less than one-half of one percent of the complaints the CFPB has received were related to payday lending and argues that complaints against illegal lenders increase when caps drive licensed payday lenders out of the state. "They're going to have a less viable alternative, which will have a higher cost and be unregulated. In previous states that have restricted payday lending, there was a spike in complaints," he said. Melanie Hall, the Commissioner of Financial Institutions in Montana, reports that Montana's experience, since implementing a 36 percent cap, bears out that point. "We have certainly had an increase in the number of complaints that we receive against unlicensed lenders,"she said. While these regulations may prove welcome, the CFPB is not legally allowed to cap rates, so the debate will still play out at the state level. "It's not going tofix thefundamental issue f it doesn't include a rate cap," Hickey said. Here, too, the story is tainted with money. Originally, Senator Christopher Dodd had intended for the CFPB to be able to regulate payday lending. But Tennessee's Senator Bob Corker intervened. In the end, the body was left without independent authority to enforce regulations against payday lenders. Corker received $31,000 in donations from Check Into Cash since 2001 and another $1,00o from the Tennessee Community Financial Services Association. Corker denies that such donations influenced his decisions. There is a broad academic consensus against payday lending. Pew Research found that 69 percent of first time borrowers use payday loans to pay for regular bills, not for unexpected expense. Lenders target low-income people and people of color. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that the median income of payday loan borrowers is $22,476. Almost half of borrowers took out ten or more payday loans over the year-long period they studied. In total, the median borrower took out ten EFTA00856699 loans and paid $458 in fees, spending 55 percent of the year in debt. The industry is ripe for exploitation: 37 percent of borrowers say they would have taken a loan with any terms. These borrowers say they are being taken advantage of and one-third say they would like more regulation. Chris Morran of Consumerist notes that, "the average payday borrower is in debtfor nearly 200 days." A recent Howard University study examining payday lending in four Southern states found that "vulnerable minority and ethnic groups and lower-income residents are disproportionately affected by the negative economic consequences of these operations." The study concluded that the cumulative impact on the economy was modestly positive in Mississippi, but negative in Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana. A separate study of payday lending in North Carolina found that payday lenders target communities of color. Even after controlling for other factors, researchers found that lctayday lenders tend to locate in urban areas with relatively higher minority concentrations, younger populations, and less-well-educated citizens." A 2011 study found that the payday lending cost 14,000 jobs and an economic loss of $1 billion through reduced household spending and increased bankruptcies. Economist Brian Melzer found that, as borrowers shift income to paying off loans, they are more likely to rely on food stamps and less likely to make childcare payments. Defenders of the industry claim that most borrowers are paying for one-time purchases, but the data suggest otherwise: most people borrow for routine expenses and continuously roll over their debt. The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that the high APR loans cost consumers $3.5 billion in extra fees each year. Payday lenders prey upon the unbanked and underbanked population, which id estimated to be 7.7 and 20 percent of the population, respectively. However, the crisis is even worse among people of color, at 20.5 percent and 33 percent for Blacks and 17.9 percent and 28.5 percent for Hispanics. In addition, 54 million Americans, or the combined populations of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, are not scoreable—they simply don't have a credit score. The unscorable population is disproportionately poor and people of color. Not being able to access credit forces them into bad lending like payday loans and forces them to pay more to rent apartments and other basic services. There are now innovations to bring the unbanked population from the margins and help them access the necessary credit. One such program, Lending Circles, which is managed by the Mission Asset Fund, currently has 2,935 clients, and has issued $3,651,307 in zero-interest loans. The program helps unscorable people build credit by creating small groups that lend money to one another with zero- interest loans. Everyone in the circle makes a monthly payment, and one member of the circle receives the loan. In 2016, America will elect a new president and a new Congress. Voters in many states will consider a flurry of ballot measures, many pushed by special interests. In South Dakota, a populist alliance of Republicans and Democrats could well spell the end to an exploitative industry that has trapped many residents in spiraling debt. That effort is echoed by similar campaigns in Alabama, Utah, and Idaho, three other poorer states with out-sized payday lending industries. Supporter of payday reform are optimistic that the money and political heft of the payday-lending industry will eventually be muted by the power of the voters. Hopefully this happens soon as the scourge of these egregious loans are taking a hideous toll on millions of Americans. EFTA00856700 In late March the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unveiled a new plan that it said would help rein in the $50 billion payday lending industry and prevent low-income borrowers from facing spiraling levels of debt. The proposal, which still must face months of review, marks the first attempt by the federal government to regulate payday lenders, whose loans — designed to help borrowers in a pinch — often come with triple-digit annualized interest rates. The CFPB, in its plan, suggests that payday lenders from the outset should determine whether borrowers have the ability to repay without defaulting or re-borrowing. That notion takes aim at a pillar of the payday business model, because lenders have long made profits from a far more desperate scenario, where borrowers take out new loans, often many times over, to pay back the initial loans and their fees. Borrowers could in some circumstances still roll over loans, but not ad infinitum; after three loans there would be a 6o-day cooling off period. Hopefully this helps and at least it shows that government is trying to address abuses in this increasingly predatory industry. Your phone on steroids Inline image 1 With 5G mobile, wireless will go even faster than fibre NEW MOBILE networks come along once every decade or so. Starting around 1980, the first generation of cellular phones relied on analogue technology. When the second-generation arrived in 1991, the networks began to go digital. By 2001, the third-generation swapped clunky old circuit- switching for efficient packet-switching. Around 2010, fourth-generation networks adopted IP (internet protocol) technology in a big way, providing mobile devices with broadband access to the internet. Each generational change brought new frequency bands, higher speeds and greater emphasis on streaming data rather than simply transmitting voice. Lately, wireless operators have begun wondering what to include in fifth-generation (5G) networks. There is a feeling of urgency as outside heavyweights like Google and Facebook threaten to upset their cosy business. If the mobile carriers can agree among themselves, they hope to have their fifth- generation networks in place by 2020. That may be a bit ambitious. Years of haggling lie ahead while policy-makers and standards bearers lobby for technologies their national carriers and telecoms firms deem vital for their own wellbeing. However, the hope burns bright that, unlike previous generations EFTA00856701 of mobile technology, 5G will be a true global standard — allowing travellers to use their personal phones anywhere in the world, without the hassle of having to swap their SIM cards for local ones bought on arrival. What to expect from 5G? At this stage, one of the few things that can be said about 5G with certainity is that — if it is to meet society's growing demands for ubiquitous and instantaneous connectivity — such networks will need to have a latency" (ie, response time) of about one millisecond. The speed at which two devices can begin to communicate with one another over today's 4G networks is about 50 milliseconds, and around 500 milliseconds for the still widely used 3G services. Even 4G is nowhere near fast enough for, say, cloud-based systems to transmit emergency instructions to driverless cars threading their way through traffic. Nor is it good enough to provide seamless language translation between participants sharing a teleconference, let alone to guide a scalpel while a surgeon is performing a life-saving operation remotely. Many real-time wireless applications will need latencies of a millisecond at most. Another cornerstone requirement is going to be a data rate of at least one gigabit per second (iGbps) to start with, and multiple gigabits per second thereafter. Mobile users will need such speeds if they are to stream ultra-high-definition (ie, 4k and soon 8k) video formats to their phones and tablets. Today, 4G networks based on UTE (long-term evolution) technology can manage between 10 and loo megabits per second (Mbps), depending on the setup and amount of traffic. Most mobile carriers are still rolling out their LIE services, while a few have started to install the latest LTE-Advanced equipment (ie, true 4G as opposed to the half-baked versions carriers have been pretending are the real thing). The peak bit rate of LTE-A is claimed to be iGbps. In the real world, however, it is more like 25oMbps. So, how much of an improvement will 5G offer over the best of 4G? Difficult to say. But given the ten- fold improvement seen over previous generations, an average 5G download speed of iGbps seems realistic — with the possibility of up to loGbps as the technology ripens with age. Such wireless bit rates are beyond even the scope of the optical-fibre currently used to deliver internet access and high- definition television to the home. Two technical features—carrier aggregation and MIMO antennas — are responsible for giving LTE-A its big boost over earlier iterations. Neither technique is particularly new, but both are expected to play a big role in helping 5G fulfill its promise. For its part, carrier aggregation is a way of boosting download speeds by plucking signals from a number of local base stations, instead of simply the most powerful one in the vicinity. These different channels — often with different frequencies from different bands in the spectrum — are combined into what is effectively a single fat pipe capable of delivering data at a far higher rate than would otherwise be possible. In LTE-A, up to five component carriers, each offering up to 20 megahertz of bandwidth, can be aggregated into a single carrier looMHz wide. Given the global shortage of spectrum, most mobile telecoms firms have snapped up frequencies wherever they can. As a result, few of their chunks of spectrum are contiguous. Fortunately, carrier aggregation not only allows mobile operators to boost their data rates, but it also permits them to patch together their disparate blocks of spectrum. This is going to be even more important when 5G enters service in the more crowded wireless world of five or more years hence. EFTA00856702 Much the same goes for MIMO (multiple input/multiple output). This works by transmitting two or more data streams via two or more antennas, and having the receiving antennas process all the incoming signals instead of just the strongest one. It has been likened to replacing a country road with a single lane for traffic with a multi-lane highway. Today's MIMO implementations tend to have three or four antennas on both the transmitting and the receiving ends. But what if each end had tens of antennas or even hundreds? That would translate into a significant increase in download speed, and a far more efficient use of the available spectrum. Which spectrum that will be, though, has still to be decided. Today's wireless devices operate in the crowded 70oMHz to 2.6GHz part of the radio-frequency compass. It is not as though once 5G hits the airwaves, chunks of spectrum used today by 4G and even 3G networks will suddenly become vacant. Mobile carriers will still have to continue their legacy services for the millions of subscribers who do not immediately upgrade to the latest devices—and may not do so for years to come. The obvious answer for 5G is to migrate from today's UHF frequencies to either the SHF (super high frequency) band between 3Ghz and 30GHz, or even to the EHF (extremely high frequency) band from 30GHz to 3ooGHz. Current occupants of these rarefied frequencies (also known as "millimetre waves" because of their wavelength) include satellite television, microwave relay links, air-traffic radar, radio astronomy and amateur radio. In most regions of the world, a chunk of spectrum around 6oGHz has been designated for public use. With their new 8o2.nad standard, the WiFi community plans to exploit the unlicensed 6oGHz band for streaming ultra-high-definition video around the home. In typical configurations, 802.nad can beam more than 6Gbps over modest distances. As always, there are drawbacks. One is that such extreme frequencies are easily blocked by walls and even people moving around. They also get absorbed by the atmosphere, by causing oxygen molecules in the air to resonate—though the absorption effect only becomes significant at distances greater than 100 metres or so. However, by going to 70GHz and above, atmospheric absorption disappears altogether. Nokia, a Finnish network-infrastructure firm, is said to achieved speeds in 70GHz trials of n5Gbps over short distances in the laboratory. All of which suggests that 5G will need base stations closer to users than current cellular towers. As it so happens, that is already a trend. So far, microcells—no bigger than a WiFi modem — have been used mainly inside buildings, to overcome poor mobile reception. To handle 5G's needs, hundreds of microcellular access points will be required to fill the gaps between existing cellular base stations. With the tiny antenna boxes attached to lamp-posts and the sides of buildings, few people will ever notice them, let alone object to their presence — as is so often the case when new cellular towers are erected these days. It is tempting to think tha